Installing and Configuring VMWare

The first task you need to perform is to install the VMWare software. Install and configure the VMWare environment using the procedures laid out in the VMWare documentation. In our case, we needed to install both VMWare Workstation (which creates the virtual machine) and VMWare Player (which runs it).

After you have done so, create a new virtual machine. During the configuration, you will be asked for the location of the installation media, as well as configuration information, such as your license key and the default user. By entering this information ahead of time, you can allow VMWare to automatically configure the system. This situation also pointed up the ease of having an ISO image of the Windows 7 installer. From within VMWare Workstation, we selected File, New, Virtual Machine, which launched the New Virtual Machine wizard. From there, we selected a typical installation and then pointed the installer at the ISO file we had created earlier. The wizard asked us for a product key, user name, and password; then it asked for a virtual machine name and a location in which to store the virtual machine. Finally, it asked for some configuration information-how big the disk was to be and whether to store the virtual system disk as a single file or split into smaller files.

Once the virtual system was created, we ran it from VMWare Player. The first time we powered up the virtual machine, it automatically detected the ISO; started it; and ran the installation process, configuring the Windows installation using the information we had already entered.

Note: One item we noted during our testing process was that configuring VMWare under a Linux host was less simple than configuring other virtual environments. After we got past the configuration issues, however, there were no problems of any kind running Windows 7 under VMWare.

Other Virtual Environments

A number of other virtual environments exist that you can use to virtually deploy Windows 7. As a rule, you should stick to virtualization software that supports either x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) technologies. Wikipedia maintains a useful list of virtualization software that supports Windows-oriented virtualization.